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crunchies

The question came up post-crunchies where Facebook won the best startup and Twitter was runner up. The post crunchies conversation in the group I was in quickly turned to what is a startup and when does a company stop being a startup. Clearly Google is not a startup anymore. People also generally agreed Facebook is not a startup. About Twitter, there was mostly consensus that it is a startup at least for a little while more.

The question is what makes a company a startup
1. Is it the number of employees (Zynga has 750!, Twitter has less than 200 – from what I know)
2. Is it the valuation (post billion dollars – you are not a startup?)
3. The company does not have “professional management”. Has a more startupy feel?
4. When company is still figuring out its business model